


The Multiverse Theory

by Ceinos



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 13:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4667483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceinos/pseuds/Ceinos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Age of Ultron spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Multiverse Theory

Clint brings her home for dinner sometimes. It can be hard, training to protect the world, and after all, she is only seventeen. His wife dotes on her, he worries about her, but they both know, for all the grief they’ve seen, they can never match the horrors Wanda Maximoff has seen; horrors visited on her by the organization she thought was SHIELD, found in loss of her brother six months ago, the only person who cared about her for most of her life. 

Clint and Wanda built a gravesite for Pietro, two weeks after the battle that cost his life. Every time she visits Clint’s house, for dinner, for a mission, she brings a small stone and leaves it there, a small cairn in front of the larger one. And every time, Clint remembers something Bruce told him once: a theory of parallel universe, an existence where everything that can happen does, somewhere. And he thinks of a world…

_Where he’d moved faster, shot faster, done_ something, _where they’d all gotten out alive. A world where, after the battle, the twins had said they didn’t want to fight any longer. And he’d brought them home, exhausted and nearly broken down, and told his children to be nice to them, and in private, quietly explained to Laura what their life had been like. And she agreed with him, and a few days later they had the paperwork sorted out–the Maximoff twins were officially under the legal guardianship of Clint and Laura Barton._

_And in a few years, Wanda was studying to teach theoretical astrophysics and Pietro, despite his star track record in college, was working his way up the ranks of an inner-city police force, working to make it more like what he had seen, at that fateful battle; what SHIELD should have been. And at Passover and Thanksgiving every year, they came back to visit their family._

But this is not that world. Here, Wanda trains with Steve and Nat, determined to become the best warrior she can be, to live up to her brother’s dream of protecting those like them, those who need it. And at Passover and Thanksgiving, she leaves a stone on Pietro’s grave, and Clint dreams of a different world.


End file.
